People-pleasing is not the same as kindness. I spent a long time thinking it was.
Kindness is giving genuinely. People-pleasing is giving because the alternative — someone's disappointment, disapproval, withdrawal — feels unbearable. The difference is in who the giving is actually for.
I was a people-pleaser at work, in friendships, in relationships. I agreed to things I didn't believe in. I softened feedback that needed to be direct. I made myself smaller so others could feel bigger. And I told myself this was generosity.
What it actually was: fear wearing the costume of niceness.
Therapy helped me see the origin of it. A childhood where the emotional temperature of the house depended on keeping a particular person regulated. I became very good at reading rooms and managing people's feelings because it felt like survival.
Unlearning it looked like saying one thing truthfully per week and surviving the discomfort. Then two. Tolerating someone's disappointment and discovering I was still okay afterward.
I still slip. I still feel the pull. But I am less governed by other people's emotional states than I was two years ago. And the relationships that have survived my becoming more honest are the ones worth keeping.